The mother died in childbed; and one of our neighbours, at Grasmere, told me that the loveliest sight she had ever seen was that mother as she lay in her coffin with her [dead] babe in her arm.

I mention this to notice what I cannot but think a salutary custom, once universal in these vales: every attendant on a funeral made it a duty to look at the corpse in the coffin before the lid was closed, which was never done (nor I believe is now) till a minute or two before the corpse was removed.

Barbara Lewthwaite was not, in fact, the child whom I had seen and overheard as engaged in the poem.

I chose the name for reasons implied in the above, and will here add a caution against the use of names of living persons.

Within a few months after the publication of this poem, I was much surprised, and more hurt, to find it in a child's school-book, which, having been compiled by Lindley Murray, had come into use at Grasmere school, where Barbara was a pupil.